awesome! thank you so much for all of your help! i really do appreciate it! ill try to post pictures of the finished cube when i finish it. i do believe i have all the information i need to feel comfortable ordering parts and not worrying about buying the wrong things.

I really want to build one of these, sadly I have a lot of things going on, so not sure when i will be able to get around to it. The difficulty, as I see it is the isolation of each row. I will be curious how you work that one out.

Thanks again crossroads, I may build one of these, but mostly I really like the idea. Nice work that.

After typing this post, I had a crazy idea. RGB LEDS. It would need a total of 25 control lines. I suppose you could do bi-color LEDs using a total of 20 control lines.

you would be doing 300ma, instead of 100, You might not even have to use different transistors for the sourcing, so it sounds like you could do this without having to change anything else.

It seems to me that you could also do the anodes differently, like with shift registers or LED drivers. I wonder, if you serialized all the data, could you run this off an attiny?

That 32kb data limit may be an issue too, it seems that isnt much space for 4x4x4 RGB cube, and a 5x5x5 is twice the data.

I was thinking about the mechanical aspect, and Im thinking if we turn it on its side, so that the 25 freestanding iines of LEDs mounted to the bottom plane, (similar to the charliecube), it might work. I will have to ponder this a bit more.

I might add from experience building a 5x5x5 led cube to be sure to use diffused leds as the brighter leds are too directional in their light to give good observation from wider angles of view. Narrow spread leds will have a negative effect on a lot of the visual pattern effects, where diffused leds give better consistent views.

i bought 10,000mcd LEDs because i figure i can always make them dimmer with code or resistors, but if i get like 1,500mcd LEDs i cannot make them brighter. CrossRoads also recommended high brightness LEDs. unfortunately they did not come diffused, so i plan on putting them in a drill and using that to sand them down. i know it will be a lot of work, but oh well. i wanted the higher brightness LEDs to be safe and not risk having a super dim cube.

edit: this is the link to the LEDs i bought. i bought 2 lots. http://www.ebay.com/itm/100-x-3mm-round-Blue-LED-superbright-bulb-lamp-light-/230634491097?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35b2e30cd9

i bought 10,000mcd LEDs because i figure i can always make them dimmer with code or resistors, but if i get like 1,500mcd LEDs i cannot make them brighter. CrossRoads also recommended high brightness LEDs. unfortunately they did not come diffused, so i plan on putting them in a drill and using that to sand them down. i know it will be a lot of work, but oh well. i wanted the higher brightness LEDs to be safe and not risk having a super dim cube.

But then again diffusing the leds will take the same light output of the led and spread it over a wider beam, so I don't think you gained anything by starting out with 'high brightness' in the first place just to then sand them down Vs getting diffused leds in the first place. However the proof is in the tasting of the pudding so maybe when you are done get a single diffused led of the same size and see if you did indeed gain any overall brightness.

Sanding them to diffuse the output I am sure will be a lot less work than the actual assembly and all the lead bending/alignment prior to soldering that is needed for cube stability and overall squareness.